Still Walking (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2008, Japan)
Rating: G Running time: 114 minutes
Hirokazu Kore-eda’s beautifully crafted portrait of 24 hours in the life of an ordinary Japanese family has rightly been compared to the classic works of Yasujiro Ozu. Centred around the visit of Ryota (Hiroshi Abe) who is returning to his Yokohama home to spend a day with his aged parents in the company of his wife, Yukari (Yui Natsukawa) and his 10-year old step-son, Atsushi (Shohei Tanaka). Also visiting is Ryota's sister, Chinami (You); her husband, Nobuo (Kazuya Takahaski); and their two children. Ryota and his father, Kyohei (Yoshio Harada) do not get on, both he and Ryota’s mother, Toshiko (Kirin Kiki) both heavily scarred by the death of Ryota’s older brother, who died fifteen years earlier while saving a boy from drowning. Whilst this tragedy haunts the family in various ways Hirokazu weaves into his wonderfully understated script, many other issues that are typical enough of ordinary life anywhere – the father’s inability to deal with retirement, his son's unemployment, the sister’s attempts to move back to the family home - that constitute the human comedy. Not that Still Walking is a comedy but rather, as the title indicates, a wistful observation that, whatever we do, life goes on. BH
DVD available from: Madman
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